Research Guides: HIST 168: Black Film History: Primary Sources

Historic Newspapers

African American Newspapers (Readex)
Publication Dates: 1827-1998
Provides the full text of articles from rare and historically significant African American newspapers. Can search across newspapers or browse individual newspapers by date.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers (US)
Searches across the full text and images of major U.S. and Black historical newspapers. Includes New York Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Defender, L.A. Times, and more.

Chronicling America Collection
Scans of historic American newspapers from the Library of Congress. Supports in-text searching.

ProQuest Newspapers: U.S. Major Dailies
Publication Dates: 1980s-Present
Searches the full text of five major US newspapers: Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Content added daily by 8 a.m.
Readers' Guide [Combined]
Publication Dates: 1890-Present
Includes articles from popular and general interest magazines published in the U.S. and Canada. Searches the Readers' Guide Abstracts and Readers' Guides Retrospective databases together; for more search functionality search each separately.

Think like a journalist. What words would they use?
Use the vocabulary in use at the time. (e.g., Negroes instead of African American)
Combine synonyms with OR to increase results. (e.g., conservatives OR right-wing)
Use the asterisk (*) to get multiple endings of a word. (e.g., integrat* for integrate, integration, integrating, etc.)
To get words closer together, use proximity operators. (See the database's help page for correct syntax.)
Limit your search to "abstract" or "citation and abstract" (if available) to get more precise results.

Digital Public Library of America
Search for millions of digital objects from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States.
"Independent Voices"
Collection of open access alternative press newspapers written by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Searches across and provides access to the more than 300 digital collections created by the Library of Congress. Includes photos, prints, drawings, maps, books, manuscripts, audio recordings, films, notated music, newspapers, and archived websites.
National Museum of African American History and Culture Digital Collections
Digital collections from the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
NYPL Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books
Umbra Search
Umbra Search is a specialized primary source portal for African American History from the University of Minnesota Libraries and the Penumbra Theater Company. The portal brings together hundreds of thousands digitized images, texts, video, and audio related to African American History from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the country.
Black Film Center and Archive
South Side Home Movies Project

Black Thought and Culture
Publication Dates: Early 19th century-Present
Includes the non-fiction writings of major Black leaders. Can browse or search by nationality, gender, occupation, people/events mentioned, and more.